Dancing on the Head of a Pin (14 page)

“Where is she now, the girlfriend?” He looked away from the corpse to his friend.

“She’s at the hospital, in shock. Whatever she walked in on practically pushed her over the edge.”

“Did she tell anyone anything? Anything that could explain this?” the angel asked, standing, eyeing the extensive damage to the room. It was as if somebody had driven a truck through it.

The detective shook his head. “We found her in the entryway pretty banged up. She’d fallen down the stairs and just kept screaming and crying.” Mulvehill shook his head. “It was pretty bad, and of course I thought of you immediately.”

“Thanks.” Remy looked around the room. There were boxes stacked everywhere, some of the contents having spilled out onto the floor in the apparent struggle. The boxes were filled with an odd assortment of things: video-games systems, a toaster oven, stereo receiver and speakers, an iPod or two.

Something caught Remy’s eye and he moved toward it. The box was jammed into a corner, an old VCR having tipped off of it, pulling open the flaps of the box.

“I was wondering how long it would take you to notice,” Mulvehill said. “When I found them I figured I should call you.”

Remy pulled back one of the cardboard lids and looked down into the box. Though they were wrapped in pieces of bubble wrap, and even some newspaper, there was no mistaking the antique nature of the items within. He reached inside.

“You might not want to touch those without gloves,” Mulvehill warned, reaching into his pocket for an extra pair.

“No worry. There won’t be fingerprints if I don’t want there to be,” the angel said, carefully removing one of the tightly wrapped objects.

“Fucking show-off,” the police detective growled.

Remy unwrapped the bundle, seeing that it contained an antique dagger, vaguely recalling that he had seen a photo of this knife in Karnighan’s paperwork.

But not one of the supposed Pitiless.

“Did you happen to find anything else of interest?” Remy asked, rewrapping the blade and placing it back inside the box. He looked about the room again, his eyes constantly drawn to the condition of the dead body there.

The detective shook his head. “Poked around some, but that’s pretty much all that I could find in regard to what you were asking about. I gather that isn’t all of it?”

“No,” Remy said, looking into the box again to be sure. “There were a few other pieces of more considerable value,” he explained.

“The guy on the third floor said that Dougie and the missus had somebody crashing with them for the last few weeks. We’re working on a name. Maybe he’ll know where the other stuff is.”

If that was all they had, it would have to do, Remy thought, standing up from the box. He was thinking that maybe he would go over to Brigham and Women’s to speak with the victim’s girlfriend when his eyes were again drawn to the deep gouges in the wooden floor. Some of the planks had actually been splintered, partially pulled up to reveal the old floor beneath.

Remy poked the jagged furrows in the wood floor with the toe of his shoe.

“We should think about getting out of here,” Mulvehill said from the doorway. “I’m sure they want to get Dougie here over to the morgue before . . .”

It was as if Remy had stepped on a live wire, his entire body going rigid as violent images flooded into his head. Scene after scene of brutal acts, two delicate knife blades slicing through the air to cut short the lives of multiple victims. It was almost more than he could stand. Remy was blind to the world, seeing only one murder flowing into another.

From somewhere in the distance he heard his friend’s voice, filled with concern.

Sound became muffled, distant, and he found himself falling, dropping to his knees upon the floor. The images grew stronger, faster, more pronounced and more savage. Men, women, and children; the blades; whoever wielded them undiscerning in who was felled by their razor-sharp bite.

A cascade of savagery almost suffocating in its relentless onslaught continued, and multiple voices could now be heard, voices that did not wish to speak to him, but to his other side.

Voices that spoke to the Seraphim, urging it to come forward.

Here,
they hissed inside his head as he watched the image of a woman’s throat being cut so deeply that it practically severed her head.

The visions halted momentarily, and Remy found himself staring at a section of flooring. It wasn’t obvious, but on closer examination he saw where the floor had been cut to create a hiding place beneath.

Compelled by the voices inside his head, Remy clawed at the floor, his fingernails digging into the edges of the boards.

He saw the dead man—Dougie—wrapping something in a towel, hiding something away. The next images were like a head-on collision: multiple flashes filled with muffled screams, frozen moments of death and destruction.

“What the fuck is going on?” he heard Mulvehill ask from what seemed like miles away, but he couldn’t tell him. He couldn’t speak.

Something had come through the wall, something large and bestial. It had first attacked Dougie before turning its attention to the room.

Searching.

The board came loose from the floor, and Remy tossed it over his shoulder before plunging his hands inside the darkness of the hidey-hole.

The memory of a woman’s scream exploded in Remy’s mind; the scream had driven whatever it was—the beast—away. It hadn’t found what it was looking for.

But Remy had.

His hands emerged from beneath the floor holding something wrapped in an old, black-checked dish towel, the same something that he’d seen Dougie holding in the flash of the past. Remy dropped the wrapped object to the floor, pulling apart the cheap cloth to reveal what was hidden within.

Brother and sister daggers.

Two of the Pitiless.

 

Holding the daggers was even worse.

The images became more clear, more focused and precise, accompanied by the sounds of the death and misery that the brother and sister had caused.

The knives were stuck to his hands, and although repelled, he never wanted to let them go. The Seraphim was aroused, enticed by the song of the blades. Remy could feel his flesh grow warm, the masquerade of humanity that he wore ready to be sloughed off and cast aside.

“No!”

He used all the strength that he had remaining to open both hands, causing the daggers to drop to the floor.

Perfectly balanced, they spun around, their razor-sharp tips digging into the hardwood. They protruded there, vibrating with malice, urging the angel to again take them up.

“What the fuck is going on?” Mulvehill asked again as Remy stumbled backward, away from the weapons’ siren call. He leaned on his friend for support.

“There’s something very wrong about those knives,” he gasped, forcing the angelic essence back down.

“Did I just see your skin start to smoke?” Mulvehill asked, a hint of panic in the man’s voice. Again the unseen world that scared him so was peeking around the corner, waving to him.

“Yeah, but I’m all right now,” Remy said, eyes searching the room. In the corner there was a stack of cheap sweatshirts with various Boston colleges’ insignias decorating the fronts. He darted over to the stack, snatching up one of the heavy pullovers. Using the sweatshirt as a buffer, he carefully pulled the two blades from the floor, wrapping them tightly in the heavy fabric.

“I need to take these,” he said, doing all he could to ignore the whispering from the blades that he could still hear inside his head. Even through the layers of cloth, he could hear them—feel them.

Mulvehill just stared.

“You can have the others,” Remy stated. “But I need to take these. This is much bigger than a case of stolen property.”

“Detective?” a voice called from the apartment’s doorway. It was one of the drivers from the medical examiner’s office. “Is everything all right?”

Mulvehill looked briefly from the doorway of the room back to his friend. “Take them,” he said. “Something tells me they’re not something we should have lying around in Evidence anyway.”

Remy bit the inside of his cheek, fighting the images of murder and death that tried to fill his mind.

“You’re right,” the angel said, resisting the urge to throw the daggers away.

Mulvehill stepped into the doorway so that he could be seen by the man at the entrance to the apartment. “I’m just wrapping things up,” he said. “I’ll be right out.”

The detective gave a casual wave and returned to Remy.

“Thank you,” Remy said.

“Are you going to be all right with those?” the detective asked. “You look a little green around the gills.”

“I’ll be fine,” Remy said, “but the sooner I get rid of them, the happier I’ll be.”

He followed the homicide detective through the building, out the front entrance, and down onto the street. The crowds had diminished slightly, many of the gawkers probably tired of waiting for something horrible to see, satisfied to go home and watch it on the evening news instead.

“I’ll let you know what I find out,” Remy whispered in his friend’s ear as he headed in the direction of his car.

Mulvehill was lighting up a cigarette. “Watch your ass,” he muttered, cigarette clamped between his lips. Some of the remaining crowd gave the man talking to himself a sideways glance before turning their attention back to the apartment building.

The die hards will be getting their payoff soon,
Remy thought, cutting across to the side street where he’d parked his vehicle.
Dougie’s bagged body will soon be coming out on a stretcher, a prize for their endurance.

The Pitiless daggers beneath his arm screamed to be noticed, but he managed to close his mind to the disturbing imagery they tried to force upon him.

Remy got to his car and tossed the wrapped blades down onto the passenger seat. His thoughts raced with what he would need to do next.

He slipped the key in the ignition, deciding that he would continue on to Karnighan’s. The old man had to know more than he was letting on. The engine turned over, and he thought that it might be wise to give Ashley a call to go over and feed and walk Marlowe. Who knew how long the business in Lexington would take, and he didn’t want his four-legged friend back home to suffer.

He was thinking that Francis might need a call as well when the black SUV seemed to appear out of nowhere, cutting him off as he pulled out of the parking space, blocking his exit.

He been around long enough to know that nothing good was about to happen.

The truck’s doors opened and four familiar faces emerged.

This shit never gets any easier,
Remy thought, almost sure that he could hear his angelic nature chuckling to itself as the four Denizens who had attacked him at home surrounded his car.

 

He didn’t have Marlowe to worry about this time, and that was good.

“You told me to call when I had something,” Remy said as he slowly got out of the car, his attention focused on the spokesman from their last meeting. “I don’t have anything yet, but you never know, I might be coming into some information shortly.”

“My employer says that you’re taking too long,” the spokesman said.

There was a barely perceptible nod, and one of the Denizens was coming at him, his hand inside his coat pocket.

Remy didn’t have time to wait to see what it was. He met the fallen angel halfway, moving as quickly as he could, slamming his fist into his attacker’s face.

The Denizen stumbled back, nose spurting blood, a short knife with a blade seemingly made from a polished black stone clattering to the ground.

Remy was glad he hadn’t waited; that particular blade, made from the walls of Tartarus, could have done some serious damage to him.

He knew the name of only one of them, Balam—the one that had pointed a gun at his dog—and decided that he would deal with that one next. The memory of what he had done caused a terrific anger to flare within Remy, and he let the Seraphim inside have a brief taste of freedom.

Balam hadn’t pulled his gun, and Remy figured they probably wanted him alive, but this particular Denizen was large and powerful, moving far more quickly and gracefully than Remy expected. He threw a punch that Remy attempted to avoid, but he moved a tad too slow, and the man’s knuckles grazed the side of his face. It hurt like hell, and for a moment he saw an explosion of stars.

Balam took immediate advantage, gripping him by the back of the coat and pulling Remy toward him. The arc of his fist was a blur as the hit connected with Remy’s stomach, doubling him over with a painful explosion of air from his lungs.

But it had brought him close enough.

Close enough to strike.

Remy allowed Heaven’s power a moment’s freedom, the fires of the divine collecting at the tips of his fingers. He thrust his hand at Balam’s stomach, the burning fingers connecting with the satiny material of the dress shirt he wore, burning through, and into the flesh beneath.

And the fire did not stop there.

Balam screamed as his body began to ignite, the fires of Heaven fueled by his wickedness. He immediately dropped to the ground and began to roll.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” the spokesman moaned, rolling his eyes.

There was movement to his left, and Remy whirled, the man who had tried to stab him earlier was charging.
Where’s the knife?
His thoughts raced as he grappled with the fallen, trying to keep his hands in view. They tumbled to the ground, each of them trying to get the better of the other.

The remaining attacker must have ducked around Remy’s car, coming at him from a blind spot.

Remy wasn’t even aware that he’d been stabbed—in the shoulder—until he felt his entire right side begin to grow numb.